After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Sisavath, Sam

  “Yeah, I do,” Roy said, but there was something in his eyes and in the way his gun hand moved slightly. Not too much, but just enough for Wash to notice.

  He’s not a killer.

  God, I hope he’s not a killer.

  “I’m hurt, and I’ll probably die tonight anyway,” Wash said. “You don’t have to kill me. Just leave me alone, and I’ll die soon on my own. You don’t need my blood on your hands, kid. Trust me. It’s not worth it.”

  Roy stared at him but didn’t say anything. He also didn’t stop pointing the small snub nose at Wash’s face. At this range, the revolver would put Wash out of his misery with just one bullet.

  But he couldn’t let the kid do that. He couldn’t just die. Not here, not now. He had things to do, creatures to kill.

  He imagined it out there, laughing at him, at all of Wash’s failures.

  “I’m no threat,” Wash said to Roy. “You got my gun. My knife. I don’t have anything anymore.”

  “You’re still you,” Roy said.

  Wash didn’t understand what that meant. Not right away, at least.

  Slowly, the realization that the kid was right came to him. Even if he wasn’t a slayer, he was still a man. He was still dangerous in the kid’s eyes, and the kid would be right. What would Wash do if he had to defend a young girl like June from the dangers of the world?

  He’s not wrong. I am dangerous to them.

  “Don’t tell him that,” the Old Man said.

  But he’s not wrong…

  “Just let me die out here,” Wash said. “You can go back into the RV and close the door and just watch me die. You can even shoot me if I try anything.”

  The kid didn’t move or look away, but his gun hand was moving more than before. Fortunately, the finger pushing against the trigger didn’t finish the pull.

  Stay that way, stay that way. I still have too much to do. If I die now, the bastard will win. And I can’t let that happen. I can’t let that happen.

  Then Roy blinked once—

  Please…

  —twice—

  God, I can’t die here. I can’t die here, not like this…

  —and pulled the revolver back.

  Wash breathed a sigh of relief.

  Roy didn’t take his eyes off Wash as he took one step back before looking over at June. “Go back inside. I’ll make sure he doesn’t try to get in.”

  Wash couldn’t see June anymore. He had been so focused on Roy—on that gun in his hand—that he hadn’t noticed when the girl disappeared. He could only hear her now when she answered, “But don’t shoot him. Okay, Roy?”

  “Okay, okay,” Roy said. “I won’t, if he doesn’t make me.”

  “Promise?”

  Roy sighed. “Yeah. I promise. Now git.”

  Wash lay back and breathed easier. Not by much, but noticeably easier. Maybe he wasn’t going to die here, at the hands of some skinny teenager, after all.

  “How many lives you got left now, kid?” the Old Man asked.

  Not enough, old timer. Not nearly enough.

  “Get going,” Roy was saying as he squinted down at Wash. “If you even turn around, I’ll shoot you dead.”

  Wash rolled over onto his stomach, then pushed himself up from the ground and onto his knees. It took a lot of effort. More than it should have, and he was out of breath by the time he managed it.

  He took a moment to compose himself, to regather his strength. He could feel Roy somewhere behind him, but all he could hear was the ticking of the automatic watch still strapped to his left wrist. At least Roy hadn’t taken that from him.

  Tick-tick-tick-tick.

  Tick-tick-tick-tick…

  “Get going,” Roy said from behind him.

  Wash sighed. “I’m trying, kid. This isn’t exactly easy as pie.”

  He forced himself up onto one foot, then the other. He was winded by the time he straightened both legs, and pain lanced up and down his body. Who knew just standing up could be so life-and-death?

  He took a breath.

  In and out.

  In and out…

  Then started walking.

  Or he got one foot forward, then followed up with a second foot, but as he reached back for the third, the ground came alive and was suddenly rushing up at him and—

  This is not good, Wash thought as his face slammed into the hard Texas soil and his world collapsed in from all around him.

  Four

  The girl’s cherubic face was hovering over him when he opened his eyes again. There was dirt on her cheeks and what looked like gray (or black) grease glistening off her long strands of hair, details that had escaped him earlier. Up close, she had very deep blue eyes and a squinty nose that made him think she’d jumped out of the pages of those comic books the Old Man introduced him to once in a town outside of Canton, Ohio.

  “Are you still alive?” she asked.

  Wash grunted and tried to work some saliva down his parched throat. “Yes,” he croaked out.

  “Roy says you were deader than you were alive.”

  “Roy is right.”

  “But you’re alive.”

  “Yes.” He paused. “I think I am.”

  June smiled. “You’re not sure?”

  He returned it. Or thought he did. “I’m alive.”

  “Good, ’cause it would suck if we had to bury you.”

  “Why would you bury me?”

  “So the monsters couldn’t get you.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know about the monsters, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is that what this’s for?” she asked, turning around slightly, then returning with his kukri. It was way too big—and sharp—for her tiny hands. “It looks dangerous.”

  “It is,” Wash said. “Be careful with it. Don’t cut yourself.”

  “I won’t.” She turned around again, this time returning with empty hands. “Roy will be back soon. He says not to let you loose if you wake up before he does.”

  Not to let me “loose?”

  It took a few seconds before he realized his hands were bound at the wrists with duct tape.

  Ah.

  It was the same with his ankles. He was lying on the floor inside the RV, between a desk to his left and a sofa to his right. June was sitting on the sofa and leaning over him.

  Wash didn’t bother testing the strength of the tape. It felt strong, and he didn’t have much energy to expend anyway. Besides, if Roy was going to kill him, the teenager would have done it already. Going through the hassle of dragging him in here, then binding him, meant the two kids were willing to keep him alive, for whatever reason.

  “You’re alive,” the Old Man said. “Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, kid.”

  Yeah, good idea.

  He stared up at the dirty ceiling and spent a few seconds regulating his breathing. Not moving helped ease his pains somewhat, but what he wouldn’t give for the spare bottle of painkillers in his supply bag. The same bag that was probably many miles—and getting longer—down the road by now. There was enough light in the vehicle, coming through the mud-caked windows, that he didn’t think he’d been unconscious for very long. At least not enough for night to have fallen outside while he was out.

  “Here,” the girl said.

  Wash looked over. She was holding a bottle of water toward him. There was about half left, and his mouth watered at the sight.

  He gave her an Are you sure? look, and she smiled.

  “I think that’s a yes,” the Old Man said. “Better drink it, before she changes her mind.”

  Wash raised his head slightly—grunting from the effort and grimacing away the stabs of pain coming from his side—as June let him have a taste. She might have allowed him to drink the whole thing, but Wash held back and took only what he needed to chase away the insects nesting in his throat.

  “Thanks,” he said, handing the bottle back to her and lying down again.

  “You’re we
lcome,” June said.

  She stashed the bottle into a beat-up pink and white backpack. There was a large animal with squinting eyes on the front. Some kind of cartoon kitty. Wash didn’t get a good look at what else she had in there, but it was apparently quite a lot, because the pack was bulging as she zipped it up.

  “Where did Roy go?” Wash asked.

  June shrugged. “I dunno. He didn’t say.”

  “How long has he been gone?”

  She glanced at her wristwatch. It was white with plastic bands, and Wash could just make out the slow and purposeful tick of each quartz-powered second counting down.

  “It’s been a while,” she said.

  “How long is ‘a while?’”

  “A while.”

  Wash smiled. He knew a lost cause when he saw one. He said instead, “Roy carried me up here?”

  “He dragged you up here mostly.” Then, off his surprised look, “He’s stronger than he looks.”

  I guess so, Wash thought, because the teenager had looked pretty skinny.

  He said, “What are you guys doing all the way out here by yourselves?”

  “We’ve always been out here by ourselves.”

  “Always?”

  She nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “How long is ‘pretty much?’”

  She seemed to think about it for a moment.

  Then, finally, “Pretty much.”

  Wash remembered something Roy had said earlier.

  “Who’s Phil?” he asked.

  “Some guys,” June said.

  “What happened to them?”

  “Roy took care of them.”

  How did he do that? Wash was going to ask, when the RV door creaked open behind him and the vehicle lowered slightly as someone came in.

  “What did you find?” June asked. She wasn’t talking to Wash.

  A black tactical pack landed on the sofa next to June. It looked familiar, because it was. Wash recognized it as one of the packs the Quarter Horse was carrying when it took off on him last night.

  “That’s mine,” Wash said.

  “Says you,” Roy said.

  The lanky teenager sat down on the sofa with a tired sigh. He unwrapped a handkerchief from the lower half of his face as puffs of dust fell from his well-worn pant legs and jacket.

  “That is mine,” Wash said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Roy said. “Finders keepers.”

  “I don’t think it works that way, kid.”

  “It does now. You been out there?”

  Wash couldn’t see the snub-nosed revolver on Roy’s person, but he assumed it was there, hidden. Not that he thought the kid was going to shoot him—especially after all the effort Roy had gone through to bring Wash into the recreational vehicle when he didn’t have to.

  Which led him to the same question he had been asking himself since he regained consciousness: Why had Roy saved his life? He was dealing with kids, sure, but even kids weren’t really kids these days. Not after The Purge. And Roy looked very much like he’d been around. Even June, all ten or eleven years of her, did. Wash recognized survivors when he saw one.

  “Where’d you find it?” Wash asked while watching June unzipping the bag and rifling through its contents.

  “Down the road,” Roy said.

  The teenager took out the same bottle of water Wash had drank from earlier and drained all of it. Wash was going to tell him, Whoa there, slow down, but figured Roy probably already knew there were two extra bottles of water in the pack he’d just “rescued” from the road. As soon as Wash thought that, June pulled out one of those containers now.

  “I saw the dead skinnies,” Roy said. Then, eyeing Wash, “That was you?”

  “Yeah,” Wash said.

  “You killed all seven of them?”

  “Yes.”

  Something flashed across Roy’s face that almost looked like newfound respect. Wash wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, though. Roy had already considered Wash dangerous before, and if he thought Wash was even more dangerous than initially assumed…

  “He already saved your life,” the Old Man said. “He’s not going to kill you now.”

  He could always change his mind.

  “Would you, in his shoes?”

  Maybe…

  But Roy didn’t immediately fish out his revolver to prove Wash right.

  Instead, the teenager said, “One of them was smaller. It wasn’t like the others.” He peered at Wash. “You know what I mean?”

  “Do you?” Wash asked.

  “I was born at night, but not last night.”

  Wash grinned.

  “I can tell by the bones,” Roy continued, sitting back. “It’s not as deformed as the others. And its back—” He reached over his shoulder and patted his own back. “It could stand straight. The others, they can’t.”

  Wash nodded and thought, He really has been out here. He knows more than most adults.

  “It was a Blue Eyes,” Wash said.

  “You killed a Blue Eyes,” Roy said. It sounded like a question, but Wash couldn’t be sure. And again, that look of almost-respect flashing across Roy’s face. “And the other six, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “You some kind of slayer?”

  “I am.”

  “That would explain the knife.” Roy picked up the kukri from the sofa. “Haven’t run across one of these before.”

  “It’s called a kukri,” Wash said.

  “You make this yourself?”

  “Someone I knew did.”

  “Who?”

  “The person who taught me how to be a slayer.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He died.”

  “Oh,” Roy said. The teenager stared at the sharp silver-coated metal for a moment, turning it slowly over in his hand.

  “What now?” Wash asked.

  Roy answered by cutting the tape from Wash’s ankles before doing the same to his wrists.

  “Add another life back to your inventory, kid,” the Old Man said.

  Wash sat up with a sigh and rubbed his hands together. A quick stab of pain from his old wounds told him he should probably lie right back down, but he ignored it.

  “I found this in your bag,” Roy said. He took a small plastic bottle out of a jacket pocket. The spare bottle of painkillers. He tossed it to Wash. “You probably need it more.”

  Wash nodded gratefully and popped open the cap. He shook out two small white pills and swallowed them.

  “Make that two lives,” the Old Man said.

  “You want some water?” Roy asked.

  “I’m good,” Wash said.

  He scooted backward until he could prop himself up against the cold upholstery of the booth that half-circled the table on his side of the RV. He looked across at the two kids. They really did look like brother and sister.

  As he watched them, they returned the favor.

  “I guess it is yours,” Roy said after a while and reached for Wash’s pack.

  “I don’t need everything inside it,” Wash said. He held up the bottle. “I’m going to need all of this, though. And maybe one of the water bottles.”

  “There’s food inside…”

  “We can split it up later.”

  Roy nodded, while June pulled out a see-through bag of beef jerky, one of many that Marie had gifted him before he left Kanter 11.

  “Can I eat this?” June asked.

  “Go for it,” Wash said.

  June beamed and opened the bag. Venison aroma filled the spaces of the large RV, and Wash watched the siblings chew on sticks of jerky for a moment. It was obvious they hadn’t had this kind of “luxury” in a while. For some reason, even though he hadn’t eaten since yesterday, Wash wasn’t all that hungry and didn’t join in.

  “Where did you find it?” Wash asked.

  “About thirty minutes down the road from where the bones were,” Roy said. He bit into a thick piece of deer meat. “I was about to give
up when I saw it lying on the ground. If it wasn’t black, I might have missed it.”

  “What were you doing all the way out there?”

  “What I do every day. Looking for supplies.”

  Wash glanced around them at the interior of the RV. They were sitting near the front, leaving a surprisingly large back portion, including a dining area in a kitchenette. Farther back were shelves, pantries, and a refrigerator. A slightly ajar door was visible even farther back, probably leading into the sleeping areas.

  “How long have you guys been here?” Wash asked.

  “Week or so,” Roy said. “We stumbled across it, like you did. We had some supplies and decided to hang out for a while. Got everything we need, including a soft bed. Only thing it doesn’t have is food and water, and I’ve been scavenging the area for that.”

  “There are towns around here?”

  “A few. But I avoid those. People are dangerous.”

  Can’t disagree with that, Wash thought, before asking, “Where do you get supplies, then?”

  He grinned at Wash. “You never know when stuff will just fall into your lap.”

  “Good point,” Wash said. Then, “So you’re not from here?”

  Roy chuckled. “No one’s from here. It’s a Winnebago.”

  “A what?”

  “A Winnebago. That’s the company that makes these RVs.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Old Stu told us all about them. People used to ride around in cars like this all the time before The Purge. Mostly old folks. They’d go from city to city, state to state, just exploring and stuff. I don’t know where this one came from, but they were probably doing the same thing before, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Wash said. “What happened to Old Stu?”

  “Same thing that happened to the guy who made you this,” Roy said, picking the kukri back up and holding it out to Wash.

  Wash took the machete and slipped it back into its sheath. “So where did you guys come from?”

  “No place you know. Far south. We did spend a couple days at a place a few miles down the road from here. A town called Jasper.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Neither did we, until we stumbled across it. They weren’t exactly looking to get noticed, if you know what I mean.”

  Wash nodded. “So how’d you find it?”

  “Like I said, I do a lot of scavenging. Just ran across it one day.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “It seemed like a nice place. Had nice people.”